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I have just watched Johnny Vegas spontaneously combust on Bleak House. As far as I am concerned, it was an accident waiting to happen.

The evidence is in. The moon landings were faked. (As James said: That’s no moon.)Tags: moon, moon+landings, clangers

Those are the four words that sum up the years since 9/11, according to Timothy Garton Ash in this morning's Guardian. He writes: If he's still alive, Osama bin Laden must be laughing into his beard. For this is exactly what al-Qaida-type terrorists want: that democracies should overreact, reveal their "true" oppressive face, and therefore win more recruits to the suicide bombers' cause. We should not play his game. In the always difficult trade-off between liberty and security, we are erring too much on the side of security. Worse still: we are becoming less safe as a result.He goes on ...

The former Director of M15 Dame Stella Rimington last night criticised government plans to introduce ID cards, saying no one in the intelligence services favoured the scheme. Speaking at a meeting of college heads in Birmingham Dame Rimington said the cards would not make the country safer and warned that the likelihood of forgery could make them "absolutely useless".

by Peter Conservativehome have a report on the Tory leadership husting. Rather low-key they seem, although Cameron-supporter Smith accepts that Davis was winning converts. There is little evidence that the campaign is bringing a new wave of interest. Smith says "the two Davids were greeted by something short of 300 mostly retired people who had scattered themselves around the rows of chairs that stretched back from a raised platform emblazoned with the message “Today’s Britain – Tomorrow’s Conservatives.”" And Smith's heart is on his sleeve when he writes that "David Cameron's turn followed. Casting aside his notes, ...

Oh my word. My jaw has dropped. Just take a listen (with RealPlayer) to a clip of Bush Was Right. (Via Tim, who’s all over G2 today.)

Bothered by leaves on the line? They can really mess up your train journey, can’t they? But why do they cause problems? Surely they’re only leaves? Soft, floaty leaves - how can they harm a big, butch, intercity train? If only we knew, then we wouldn’t feel so frustrated. We wouldn’t mind late trains because we’d [...]

EDM 996 OPERATION OF THE LICENSING ACT 2003 Basically if an application is refused or withdrawn and varied slightly then a completely new set of objections needs to be sent to the council. This makes life harder for objectors. There should be some balance on this whereby previous recent comments are taken into account appropriately. I have moved an EDM on this (see link).

APOLOGY:For those of you who read this during the day, gremlins in my laptop made me lose about half the piece during posting. So for once, the fact my argument seemed pretty incoherent wasn't actually my fault. I am now attempting to rehabilitate the post... ---- I don't think I've ever literally been woken up by a punch in the stomach, but yesterday came pretty close. How on earth could England have thrown away that Test match? I'd gone to bed fairly sure of victory, thinking that with a whole day to bat, scoring about 170 more runs with nine ...

Last night was Lichfield and Tamworth Liberal Democrats' AGM, I attended to run a training session "Building A Winning Team". The AGM was well attended with one fifth of the local membership turning up.

On a more mundane note the Western Mail devotes most of page three this morning to a campaign by Assembly Member support staff to get some decent food into our canteen. I could not agree more. The range of exotic and largely experimental dishes served up on a Tuesday and a Wednesday are largely indigestible as far as I am concerned, whilst if you go in there on other weekdays the choice and the available quantities are limited. Some plain nutritional cooking would not go amiss.As for the members' dining room, I can see that it is useful to entertain ...

Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil liberties pressure group Liberty, is absolutely right - the comments by former MI5 chief Stella Rimington yesterday are "another nail in the coffin of the massive identity card folly." Dame Rimington told the Association of Colleges' annual conference in Birmingham that "ID cards have possibly some purpose. But I don't think that anybody in the intelligence services, particularly in my former service, would be pressing for ID cards. "My angle on ID cards is that they may be of some use but only if they can be made unforgeable - and ...

Keep reading about a naughty Cherie Blair calendar doing the rounds in Westminster. Came across it this morning by chance on Gido Fawkes' Blog . It's not just naughty but downright pornographic and disgusting. Gido has chosen the tame February page as his reference. Cherie Blair is not my flavour of the month but I wouldn't wish this kind of insult on my worst enemy. Personally I don't find it amusing. It seems a male thing to debase women in this way.

…from Lord Mackenzie, on ID cards: He told BBC News: “Let’s look at the Soham murders. If Ian Huntley had had an identity card, would he have got the job at Soham school which allowed him to commit the murders? I think not.” Erm, I think so, your lordship. Huntley didn’t disguise his identity to get [...]

I believe that David Cameron, if he Ascends to the Olympian Heights of Conservative leadership, intends to realign the Tories in Europe away from its traditional CDU style allies and gather together with certain eurosceptic parties chiefly from east Europe. These parties I think are partially funded and encouraged by supporters of the current US administration in order to weaken the EU and make Europe easier to manipulate by the USA. This policy is expressed succinctly by John O'Sullivan, the British-born editor-in-chief at United Press International in Washington, D.C. In a notable article in 2002 he argued that it is ...

Can someone help me get this straight on education? In order to 'escape from the control of local authorities' schools that become 'independents' will be given the carrot of exemption from the National Curriculum if the current White Paper proposals become law. Meanwhile other legisation is proposed setting up a National Curriculum for early years education... Is this just possibly a little contradictory? By the way I trust that our MPs remember we actually have a policy on early years education which is highly Liberal and which directly contradicts the assumptions in the governments latest soundbites. The one on community ...